


The Call of the Wild

by Xalts



Category: Panther in Argyll, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: (Hinata's POV), Gen, Graphic Description of Animal Death, Honestly this could end after any chapter but I'm leaving it open in case I want to write more, Knowledge of Panther in Argyll not required, Might continue this later... maybe, POV First Person, Panther in Argyll AU, Twoshot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-24
Updated: 2015-03-25
Packaged: 2018-03-19 10:46:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3607260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xalts/pseuds/Xalts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time we met, he looked at me with a smile as if he’d known me for years, and said in a breathless voice, “Ah, that’s good, you’re one of us.”<br/>--<br/>There's something lurking in the woods behind Hope's Peak Academy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Based very loosely on Panther in Argyll by Lisa Tuttle. Prior knowledge of Panther in Argyll not required.

The first time we met, he looked at me with a smile as if he’d known me for years, and said in a breathless voice, “Ah, that’s good, you’re one of us.”

His name was Nagito Komaeda, a student of Hope’s Peak Academy. A main-courser. I had been a reserve-courser for my first year, but would be moving to the main course this semester on account of the effort I’d put into my work. It was immediately alienating. Any friends - rather, acquaintances - I’d made on the reserve course were left behind, and now I was surrounded by people who were all already familiar with each other, and unfamiliar with me. But he had approached me. Spoken to me. Reached out to me.

It wasn’t quite a friendship. There were two weeks until classes began, during which I was meant to settle in to the main building and meet new people, but I prefered to keep to myself. And yet he always managed to find me and give me a passing smile or a greeting, until I could almost kid myself that we really did know each other.

“Do you know the dun?” he asked me one day at lunch, as he slid into the seat opposite me.

“The dun?” I asked. I didn’t know what the word meant. The conversation had started without so much as a greeting, and I was already struggling to keep up.

“There’s an old brick fort up on the hill, in the woods behind the school. A few of us hang out there during our off time. Do you want to join us?” Komaeda made it sound effortless. As if I were already welcome, already a part of his group. I gave him a shaky nod.

“Uh, sure. What time do you all…?”

“Oh, not until late, but I’ll meet you there earlier. Maybe six o’clock this evening?” His smile was hiding something, but it was so kindly that I didn’t dare press it, lest I lose the one tentative friend I’d managed to find.

“Sure. That sounds fine.”

“Great! I’ll see you later, then!” he said, and then he was gone. He hadn’t even touched the food on his tray, and I was left alone, wondering if the brief conversation had even happened.

Since I wasn’t familiar with the woods, I set off a good forty minutes before I was due to meet Komaeda. The hill had been just visible over the trees when I set off, but once I was under the canopy, I had no chance of finding it if I got lost. I just hoped I was heading in the right direction to begin with. The bracken was foreboding, occasionally rustling in the wind as if something were hidden behind it. Paranoia tickled the back of my neck and made my skin prickle. Every noise, every twig underfoot or creaking branch, became a threat. I was suddenly aware of how very alone I was.

Or rather, the fact that I wasn’t alone at all, and that was even worse.

I froze, listening to the sounds of the forest. Without the noise of my own movement obstructing it, I could hear something moving. Something big. My body began to wrestle with itself, fight or flight instincts warring against each other, but before I could decide what to do, a huge black shape exploded out of the underbrush, not ten feet away from me. I fell backwards into the dirt, petrified by terror. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

Two huge black cats were fighting one another, their forms wrapped around each other so much that they seemed to form a single entity, one that was trying to tear itself in two. Their growls and yowls filled the air as they swiped at one another with massive paws, their jaws poised to bite but not quite making contact. I didn’t understand. Was this some kind of play-fight? Before I could decide, a third cat appeared, hissing and whining at the fighting pair. I knew, just knew somehow, that this was a female. She cuffed one of the males around the head, knocking him away from the other, and they separated.

Involuntarily, a choked coughing sound dragged its way out of my throat. Instantly, the three cats turned their attention to me. They were huge, their massive heads nearly a metre off the ground, and all three had intense golden eyes that seemed to trap my attention on them. For several long seconds, I was sure that I was staring at my own death, but as if responding to an unheard signal, the three turned at the same time and disappeared back into the undergrowth. The only sign that they’d been here at all were the scuff marks in the dirt. I found a nearly full pawprint among them. It was bigger than my hand.

Knowing what was in these woods now, I wondered why Komaeda had sent me alone into them. Had his intention been for me to be ripped apart by wild animals? Or just for me to get hopelessly lost, and probably starve to death out here? Just as I was wondering where I was exactly, there was a hand on my elbow and there he was. I bit back a yelp of surprise.

“Ah, sorry, you were taking a while. Did you get lost?” he said. I wondered how he’d found me so easily. There were twigs in his cloud of white hair. I resisted the urge to pluck them out.

“Cats,” I managed to stutter out. “Big cats. Black ones. In the woods.”

He smiled at me, that same smile as when we’d first met. “Yes,” he said, and then he was pulling me through the trees and up a slope of dirt. I realised we were at the base of the hill, and I could see the brick fort ahead of us, a solid cylinder of stone stretching up from the very top of the mound. It was smaller than I’d expected. Once Komaeda had pulled me inside, I realised there was only room for maybe seven or eight people in here. Not that anyone would want to come here. It smelled musty, like something had been living here. An animal. I thought of the big cats again.

“Dun a’Choin Duibh.”

“Pardon?”

“Its Gaelic,” Komaeda said. “The name of this place. It’s called the Dun of the Black Dog.”

“Black dog?” I said, hoping my real question was clear. Komaeda’s eyes glittered in the shade of the dun.

“You saw panthers.”

So that had been real. The thought didn’t reassure me, though. It just meant my fears were valid. I could have died.

“They wouldn’t have hurt you,” Komaeda said, as if he’d read my thoughts. “They know better.”

“They’re wild animals, aren’t they?” I said.

“Not really. Not completely.”

I opened my mouth to ask what he meant by that, but a shadow moved in the corner of my eye and I froze again. Slowly, I turned my head into the shaft of light that shone through the opening of the dun.

A panther stood there, in the open, completely unafraid and unmoving. It stared at me, the glow of its golden eyes locked right on me. Before I could react, another padded up the hill to stand beside it. Then another. And another. More and more of these massive creatures came crawling out of the woods, until about twelve stood in a loose semicircle around the entrance of the dun.

I was shaking, I realised. Komaeda put one hand on my shoulder, but his skin was so cold, it was as if the life was already being drained from me. He didn’t seem worried at all. In fact, it was as if he’d planned this.

“You’re one of us,” he said in a low, carefree voice. I remembered what he’d said to me, that first time we met. “You’re just like us, Hinata-kun. You have the wild inside you. Can’t you feel it right now? Isn’t it just tearing you up inside, fighting to get out?”

And maybe it was the way he was talking, softly and directly into my ear, or maybe this was real, but I could almost feel it. My guts were wrenching, my heart pounding as if I’d just finished a sprint. Every inch of my skin was prickling. I tried to say something but nothing came out.

“You’re just like us,” Komaeda said again. “You just need to let it out. Join us, Hinata-kun. Let the wild out of you.”

The panther - I remembered the word now, and it seemed so obvious, so natural - that had appeared first gently padded forwards on massive paws. It was a female, not the same one I’d seen earlier, but somehow intensely familiar. I couldn’t move. All I could do was keep eye contact as she neared me. My blood felt like ice in my veins. I realised I was shivering.

The hand on my shoulder snaked its way down my arm until it was clenched around my wrist, and then Komaeda pulled my forearm out in front of me, exposing its pale underside to the panther. Before my brain could catch up with my eyes, the panther opened its massive jaw and bit me.

I don’t remember the pain. I don’t even remember how I got free. I saw the panthers disappearing into the woods once again, and then Komaeda was walking away with an apologetic smile, leaving me alone in the dun. I tried to call out to him, but before he reached the treeline, he was gone, and one final panther was walking in his place. There was no transition, no visible transformation. One second there was a boy, the next, a beast. But I understood now.

I sank to the floor of the dun. My arm was barely even bleeding. The puncture marks were shallow, and almost scabbed already. But they had done their job. The wild that was within me was free now. And I was the same as them.

Because they were no longer simply panthers. They were people like myself. Those who embraced the wild.

I didn’t dare attempt to transform myself. I didn’t know how it worked. I could get stuck as a panther forever. I decided it was safer to go home tonight, and I could grill Komaeda tomorrow. I stumbled down the hill and back into the trees, making a rough beeline for where I hoped the school was.

I didn’t get lost, because every time I stepped off path, a pair of glowing golden eyes showed me the way.

 


	2. Chapter 2

The next day, I cornered him in the lunchroom.

“You need to explain everything,” I said in as firm a voice as I could manage. The bite marks on my arm were scarlet against my skin. Komaeda smiled in that infuriatingly knowing way, and nodded, and sat down at a table in the corner, where we wouldn’t be overheard.

“It’s not that difficult to understand, Hinata-kun,” he said. I was already fuming. The fact that I didn’t understand something that was apparently so easy was just a reminder that I was a reserve-courser, that I didn’t belong among the main-coursers. “Some people are born with the wild trapped inside them, and another can let it out by breaking the skin. It’s simple.”

“And that’s just… That’s it? You’re born this way, and that means you get to turn into a… a panther?” I was trying my best to stay eloquent. I think I was failing.

“Well, obviously not everyone who has the wild in them gets found. Some people die without ever knowing what they truly are. That’s why when we find someone, we have to make them realise. Or the wild will die out completely. It’s harder nowadays, because humanity has pushed nature so far back.” Komaeda took a bite of his bread roll, chewing thoughtfully. “Enoshima-san was the one who awakened us all.”

“Who’s Enoshima?”

“Oh… You’ll meet her,” was all Komaeda would say on the matter. “She came here with the wild already released, and she saw it in all of us. You’ll be able to see it now, you see. It’s like a light, a sort of… glow, that shines out of the eyes of those with the potential to use it.”

I didn’t quite believe him, but at the same time, I couldn’t help sweeping my gaze across the lunchroom, wondering if I’d be able to see what he described coming from any of the other students. Komaeda chuckled, not unkindly but I still felt my cheeks burn.

“The wild is rare, Hinata-kun. To even find as many as she has… Enoshima-san has been lucky. But at the same time, that makes it more difficult. Panthers are territorial, you see. The woods really aren’t big enough for all of us.”

I remembered the scuffle I’d seen last night, those two males wrestling. Had it really been play-fighting, or was it a fight over something else? Territory… or, my brain supplied, the female. Maybe they’d been fighting over her.

Without saying anything, I stood up to leave. Komaeda didn’t react. This was too much for me. It was just too weird to be true. I didn’t want to believe it. I strode back to my dorm as fast as I could without flat-out running, and hid under the covers all day, trying not to freak myself out.

It couldn’t be real, could it? People didn’t just turn into panthers. And yet I’d seen it happen. Last night at the dun, I’d seen Komaeda turn into one. And there had been so many… There was no way I could have been surrounded by so many wild predators and come out (relatively) unscathed without there being some human intelligence behind that golden gaze.

Suddenly my bed was smothering, and I had to be outside. It was still early afternoon, with a light layer of clouds covering the sun just enough to create a chill. Even though I’d left by the front entrance to the school, I found myself drawn to the woods behind it. At some point, they’d shifted from mildly terrifying to almost homely in feel. I pressed my palm against the trunk of a tree. There was some kind of smell clinging to it, one that I couldn’t identify, but which made me think of the beasts that lurked here.

They were all people, right? Students? So they wouldn’t be here during the day… And even if they were, they’d be no threat to me. I was supposedly one of them.

Swallowing my nerves, I let myself drift through the woods. The trees’ gentle presence calmed me, and the way the sunlight filtered through the canopy made even the scraggly underbrush seem bright and lively. Somehow, I found myself climbing the hill to the dun. I hadn’t even realised I was heading for it.

Someone was already there. A boy, maybe my age, but shorter, with blond hair cut close to his head and a brush of freckles across his nose. Despite his height, he had such a strong presence that I almost didn’t notice the girl with him, glaring over her glasses. Neither of them said a word to me, but the boy nodded, and I knew I was welcome. I was among, dare I say it, friends. I sat down near the entrance of the dun, not really looking at either of them. I didn’t know what to say. There was some kind of underlying comfort, a familiarity, running between us, but words felt useless.

There was a scattering of bones on the floor that had not been there yesterday, small enough to be a rabbit or some other rodent. They were still wet, stained with glistening blood. All the meat had been stripped from them. I looked up and noticed a small reddish smear on the corner of the girl’s mouth. I understood. This had been her prey.

After a few minutes, three more figures appeared at the bottom of the hill. Two boys, one with bright pink hair and dressed in a yellow boiler suit, and one cloaked in black and purple, and between them, a girl with shining blonde hair. Somehow, despite their appearances, I recognised the three panthers from yesterday. With a flick of his head, the short boy beckoned for the girl next to him to join them. They went out to meet the new trio, and then, without so much as a blink, all five were panthers, and they were disappearing into the woods. The last one paused, however, and as he turned back to me, he became the short boy once more.

“Oi, it’s Hinata, right?” he called up to me. I nodded mutely. “You want to come hunting with us?”

I managed to call out, “Maybe later,” and that seemed enough for him to leave me alone, turning back into a panther as he joined the pack. I stared at the spot they’d disappeared into for a long time.

Would it be that easy for me, too? To be able to switch between human and panther at will, without so much as a sign of effort? And them hunting together… I knew enough to know that panthers, or rather, leopards, were solitary hunters, not pack animals. And yet they’d waited for a bigger group before hunting…

It was still a mystery to me. The group dynamics, the friendships… I didn’t even know their names, apart from Komaeda, obviously, and Enoshima, whose image in my mind was solely of the panther who had bitten my arm.

I sat alone in the dun, watching the sun dip lower in the sky, for a good few hours. Despite my confusion and worry, it was peaceful out here. The musty animal smell was no longer foreign to me. I knew it was just the smell of panther. Slowly but surely, I seemed to be coming to terms with what was happening here. It was still ridiculous and unbelievable, but I’d seen it enough times for my brain to have to accept that it was true; people could become panthers.

As if to prove me right, another panther appeared, this time from the other side of the hill, circling around the dun a couple of times to check the perimeter before approaching. The bite on my arm throbbed as I recognised her. Before I knew it, Enoshima, as a human, was stood in the doorway of the dun. Her heels and massive ponytails cut an impressive figure, towering over me.

“Hinata-kun,” she crooned, her voice like sugar. I felt more threatened by her human form than her panther one. “How’s your arm, hm? Does it still hurt?”

“N-no, it’s fine,” I mumbled, holding it out for her to see, and then immediately feeling stupid for doing so.

“You didn’t join the hunt,” Enoshima said. Her lips were blood-red. I wondered how much of that was actually blood.

I swallowed hard. Something about this girl made me nervous. “I, um. I don’t know how to…”

Immediately she was a panther again, stalking close to me and rubbing her cheek against mine, and then human, the tips of her long, sharp fingernails lightly scratching me as she ran her hand across my throat, then panther once more, her tail fluttering in my face. When she spoke, she was human, but when she prowled, she was animal; for her, there was no difference between the two.

“It’s not a matter of knowing how to be a panther, Hinata-kun,” she said. Something about her tone made her instantly believable. I knew she was telling the truth. “It’s about knowing how not to be a human.”

“I don’t understand…”

“Don’t try to be an animal. Try not to be a human. Don’t think, don’t act. Just feel.” As in to complement her words, a wind blew up around the dun, sending a spray of dust and leaves into the open tower. “Become wild. Become part of nature. Let the panther inside you come free and leave the human behind. Come with me, Hinata-kun.”

She made it sound so easy, and then somehow, it was. She left the dun in panther form, and I followed, and it took me a couple of seconds to realise I was on all fours. I could feel the air twitching around my whiskers, could feel the power in my paws and the balance of my tail. I knew what it was to be wild, to leave humanity behind. It was utterly intoxicating.

The woods were more than just woods now. I knew what the smells and sounds really meant, and what was important to look out for and what could be ignored. I pressed my nose to the bark of a tree, inhaling deeply and instantly knowing the scent signatures of each and every member of the pack that had marked this spot, all of them sharing this part of their territory. I looked at Enoshima. Her golden eyes were glittering in the darkness, and she swished her tail in approval as I rubbed my cheek against the trunk, adding my smell to the mix.

There was a movement in the underscrub. I tensed, the muscles in my back legs preparing for movement, but before I could move, Enoshima was already on it. She snatched at something in the bushes, breaking its neck with her jaws, and then threw the carcass of a rabbit at my feet as if to say, there, that’s how it’s done. I knew I had to learn fast, but for now, my stomach was growling, and without hesitating - hesitation was human, so, so, human - I took a mouthful of meat from the body. It was warm and wet, and melted on my tongue, blood dripping from my jaws.

Between us we made quick work of the morsel. It was barely anything for two cats of our size. Enoshima tilted her ears, and I understood, despite her lack of words. The hunt was nearby, and there would be good prey, and we would feed well. I was already taken. Not a shadow of doubt crossed my mind as I followed her into the woods.

If someone had asked me to go back to humanity at that point, I would have had a hard time saying yes. And no one was asking me. All I knew, at that moment, was the wild.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

I woke up in the dun as a human, surrounded by panthers. The first rays of sunrise were beginning to creep up from the east, casting a silvery-grey light over the treetops. Memories of the hunt were coming back to me, but in fragmented flashes: the adrenaline racing through my muscles as we herded a wild boar; the excitement and power that came with running as a pack; bones crunching under teeth and flesh tearing from limbs…

I was sandwiched in between two cats, who I knew from last night were Komaeda and Enoshima, though they were now identical to me in my morning haze. More and more were pressed against each other, about five of us fitting into the floor-space that could fit maybe eight humans, with the rest perching on what remained of upper floors, the first a good ten feet or so off the ground. I knew the power in the muscles of their back legs had launched them to those heights. I also knew that power could kill me in a second.

Unnerved, and on shaky legs, I left them to it and returned to the school. The woods were familiar to me now. I recognised passages we had walked in panther form, the way the trees formed natural pathways around rocks and slopes. It took less than twenty minutes to reach the school, and a few more to get to my dorm. When I saw myself in the mirror, I was thankful that it was early enough to avoid any other students.

My hair was caked in what I first thought was mud, but when I saw the crusted brown smears that covered most of the lower half of my face, I realised it was blood. I was filthy, my skin and clothes covered in streaks of dirt and grass stains. And the smell… it was half carrion, half panther. I felt disgusting.

A question rose, however. If my clothes had reached this state, did that mean they were a part of my panther form? Did they become my fur? Or… Another thought chilled me to the bone. Was I really transforming at all? Or did I just think I was? Had I somehow been hoodwinked by their persuasive suggestions, and was actually just running around in the same body I’d always known, merely thinking I was a panther? I felt like an idiot, like I had been tricked or hypnotised somehow. I remembered Enoshima’s fingernails running along my jaw. Her blood-red smile.

I wanted nothing more to do with them.

Around mid-morning, after I’d showered and changed, I tracked down Komaeda in the lunch room. He wasn’t alone, like I thought he would be, but surrounded by people I knew on instinct were a part of the pack. A girl with piercings and multi-coloured streaks in her hair. A chubby boy running a comb through his pompadour. A red-haired girl with a camera hung around her neck. I tried to ignore them as I pulled him aside.

“I don’t want this,” I said. He didn’t reply, merely smiled as if it was an inside joke. “I’m serious. I want to get rid of it.”

“You can’t.”

“Why not?!”

“It’s a part of you, Hinata-kun. It’s who you really are.” Komaeda’s fingers brushed against mine, like he was about to take my hand, but he pulled away before they could make contact. “You can’t get rid of it once it’s been released.”

“I didn’t ask for it to be released,” I snapped. I wasn’t in the mood for his words. “I just… I just want to be…”

“Normal?” Komaeda smiled at me again, and I realised he knew already that I was lying. Of course I wanted to be special. But for me, special meant clever, it meant doing well in classes and getting high grades and not having to struggle to be average. This was too special.

I couldn’t look at him any more. I stormed out of the lunchroom. I very nearly stormed out of the school altogether, the woods calling for me, but I caught myself and headed back to my dorm instead.

I managed to avoid their contact for two full days, and then I glanced out of the window that evening and saw a panther staring up at me. It was sat, plain as anything, right in front of the school. If anyone else happened to look outside, they’d see it. I realised I couldn’t hide from them forever.

That night, I joined the hunt again.

I hated myself for giving in, but I had to forget that feeling. It was too human. I had to allow my emotions to melt into nothingness. Give up on myself and my own miseries. The only thing I had to feel was the wild, and the ground beneath my paws, the sounds and sensations that flooded my ears and whiskers. A she-panther greeted me as I met up with the pack, rubbing her cheek against mine and pressing her full body along the length of mine. I felt a low rumble from deep within her chest, and purred back in response. Another came forward and butted heads with me, another licking my ear, more and more surging from the darkness to welcome me to their number.

As a panther, I didn’t have to worry about the consequences later, or my trivial worries and fears. All I had to do was be a panther. It was so easy, I wondered why I had been scared at all.

The prey tonight was further away. I’d learned the names of enough pack members to know that it was Owari who had scouted ahead and found a herd of deer. At their lead was a stag, easy enough for one or two of us to take down, and plenty of fawns for easy feeding. Enoshima growled, and that was our signal to move out. She led the pack without question.

There were seventeen of us in total: eight male, nine female. I noticed how certain groups seemed to form even within the pack. Owari tended to stick with Nidai, Sonia moved between Souda and Gundam, Koizumi and Saionji seemed joined to the hip. I stayed closest to Komaeda, the only one who I was on familiar terms with as a human, and Komaeda stayed at the front of the pack, only separated from Enoshima by a sleek, powerful female whose golden eyes seemed void of compassion. Another female, Tsumiki, hovered on Enoshima’s other side.

We traveled for what felt like miles, far beyond the boundaries of the woods behind the school. I briefly wondered if there were any other panthers about, if we would be encroaching their territory, but I could smell no scent markers but those used by our pack. I realised that the wild really was a rare occurrence. The only reason so many of us were gathered here was because of the school bringing us together, and then Enoshima recruiting anyone she could. There wouldn’t be anyone outside of our number that had been released. We had free reign, could go as far as we wanted.

The herd was already alert by the time we were in position. I’d stayed with Enoshima’s immediate group, five of us clustered together. She’d sent six around one side of them and six around the other, meaning we had the deer surrounded. We were downwind of them. With how we were spread out, there was no way they could smell us, but their big ears were twitching around in all directions, hyper aware of any sounds we made.

It was more instinct than thought. At this time, thinking was not panther enough. I simply knew, as certain as gravity, when to surge forwards and pounce. My teeth sank into the throat of a doe, even as Pekoyama was launching herself onto its back, her claws in its flank as she snapped at its spinal cord, going for the kill. Around me, deer were snorting and wheezing, calling out to one another as they desperately fled to safety, even as my companions took down fawns and does alike.

I swallowed the meat that was in my mouth before its source was even dead. We would feast tonight, for sure. Enoshima’s group had taken down the stag, and she was already chomping at its underbelly, opening up its side for the rest to eat.

My stomach turned in protest. The hot, wet smell of fresh blood was seeping into my lungs, and something, the human inside me, didn’t like it. I backed away from the carcass, my hands shaking - human hands, doused in deer blood. I couldn’t chicken out now, I told myself. I desperately tried to become panther again, but the spell had been broken. All my fears and worries were flooding back to me, and I couldn’t dispel them so easily this time.

Enoshima looked up at me with eyes full of pity - and maybe, unless I was reading too deep, disappointment. She opened her massive jaws and yowled, the sound reverberating through my entire body. Another panther looked back too - Komaeda. He merely tilted his head, as if asking what I would do next.

There was nothing I could do. So I turned around and ran.


End file.
